ven than earth, to fall into melancholy, or distress of soul; or suppose it were into some loss of reason, they presently cry out against religion, and strictness, and preciseness, and making so much ado to be saved; and say it is the way to make men mad. Hence comes the proverb of the Papists (Spiritus Calvinianus est spiritus melancholicus'); and of the profane among ourselves, that A Puritan is a Protestant frightened out of his wits.' They dare not study the Scripture so much, nor meddle with such high matters as their salvation, nor be so godly, nor meditate on the world to come, lest it should drive them out of their wits. O miserable men! As if it were possible for you to be more dan.. gerously mad than you are already! (Unless by growing unto greater wickedness!) Do you lay out your wit, and strength, and time in feeding a corruptible body for the grave, and spend your lives in running after your own shadows, while your everlasting life is forgotten or neglected? Do you sell your Saviour with Judas for a little money; and change your part in God and glory, for the brutish pleasures of sin for a season? And are you afraid of altering this course of life, and turning to God, lest it should make you mad? Lord, what a besotting thing is sin! What a cunning cheater is the devil! What a deluded, distracted sort of people are the ungodly! Will you run from God, from Christ, from grace, from mercy, from Scripture, from the godly, and from heaven itself for fear of being mad? Why what greater madness can you fear than this? What worse is human nature capable of? Unless it be the addition of a further measure of the same, and unless it be to hold on in that way, and persecute the contrary with such like aggravations of your madness, I know not of any worse that you should fear. Will you run to hell to prove yourselves to be in your wits? Again I say, the Lord bless us from such a kind of wit. Nay, hell itself hath no such distractedness as yours. The difference between the one thing needful, and your many things, is there better, though too late, understood! Is loving God the way to be mad? and loving the world and fleshly pleasures the way to be wise? Is conversing with God in humble prayer, and believing his love, and loving him, and delighting in him, and speaking of his name, and word, and works unto his praise, and hoping to live with him for ever, I say is this (which is the work of a

believer) a liker course to make men mad, than serving the devil, and drudging in the world, and living under the curse of God, and in continual danger of damnation? What men are they that dare entertain such horrid, and unreasonable suggestions?

I confess we are not unacquainted with the sadness and melancholy that some persons have contracted by religious employments; and perhaps one of a thousand may lose their wits. But I must tell you all these following points, that will shew you that religion is not to be blamed for it, nor avoided.

1. It is ordinarily persons of the weaker sex, or of very weak brains, and very strong passions, that are naturally inclined to it, and are not able to bear any long and serious thoughts, about matters of that moment, which are apt to make the deepest impressions. But persons that naturally are of sound and calm dispositions, are seldom troubled with any such effects.

2. It is usually the case of persons that mistake the nature of religion, though not in the main, yet in some particulars of great concernment; that study not sufficiently the love of God declared to us in our Redeemer, but feed their grief and troubles only by the thoughts of their own infirmities, and that consider not that the chief part of religion doth consist in love, and joy in the Holy Ghost, and in thanksgiving and delightful praising our Creator. So that it is not long of religion if men will leave out the chief part of religion, and make themselves a religion of so much only as may break their troubles.

3. And I must further tell you, that as I have had opportunity of knowing the state of as many troubled, distempered minds as any one of you, whoever he be; so I must needs bear witness, that I have met with many that have been distracted by worldly cares, or sorrows, or discontents, for one that ever I knew distracted with the cares about the matter of their salvation. And yet though it be worldly care and sorrow that most commonly bringeth death and madness, you will not therefore give over your callings, and resolve that you will meddle no more with meat, or drink, or clothes, or houses, or lands, or friends, or children. Nay, it were well if you would be brought to moderation, and taken off your inordinate desires.

And yet in the conclusion I must tell you, that, though I know that the loss of a man's understanding is a very grievous affliction, and such as I hope God will never lay upon me, yet I had a thousand times rather go distracted to Bedlam with the excessive care about my salvation, than be one of you that cast away the care of your salvation for fear of being distracted, and will go among the infernal Bedlams into hell for fear of being mad. The height of your carnal wisdom is more deplorable than their distraction. For God will condemn no man because he is distracted, nor so much as blame him for it, unless as it is the fruit of sin, no more than he will condemn or blame an idiot or a beast because they have no use of reason. If David had been what he feigned himself to be, (1 Sam. xxi. 13, 14.) it would not have cast him out of God's favour, so far as one sin did, much less so far as the ungodly are. A man may go to heaven for such a madness. But you that have reason for the world, but none for God; that are wise to do evil, that have wit to destroy yourselves, and serve the flesh, but none to look after your recovery and salvation; it is you that shall have the stripes, the many, the great, the endless stripes. You that have so much wit as that you glory in it, and think yourselves wiser than the rest of the world, and yet have not wit to know, and love, and serve your Maker; nor to value and seek first the one thing necessary, it is you that will prove the miserable fools.

If you had not a natural capacity of understanding, you had had no sin. But now you have no cloak for your sin, when you have the worldly wisdom, which is foolishness with God, and have a sinning, selfdestroying wit, and are wilfully void of the wisdom that should save you (1 Cor. i. 25. iii. 19. Jer. viii. 9.), when you have not a necessitated, but a voluntary distraction; and "this is your condemnation, that light is come into the world, and you have loved darkness rather than light, because your deeds were evil;” John iii. 19.

If you think this wilful and senseless neglect of the one thing needful is not a sufficient evidence to prove that miserable distraction which I charge upon you, will you but believe your Maker, and let the word of God be judge between us, and mark what language it giveth to such as I now describe, 2 Thess. iii. 2. Jer. iv. 22. Eccles. vii. 25.

Deut.

2 Pet. ii. 12. Psal. xcii. 6. xciv.8. Jer. x. 8. 14. xxxii. 6. Psal. lxxiii. 3. 22. 2 Sam. xiv. 10. In these places your course hath no better titles, than unreasonable, foolish, brutish, sottish,' &c. even from the God of wisdom himself, who is the fittest to give you the character that you deserve. When you have truly considered of your way, if indeed you find that you have dealt like wise men, hold on and say so at the last, when you have eaten the fruit of your doing, and have seen the end.

5. Furthermore consider, that whatever else you have been doing in the world, if the one thing necessary be yet undone, you have lost and abused all the mercies that God hath bestowed on you. Many a thousand precious mercies have been given you. And to what use, but to help you to everlasting mercy, and to prevent your everlasting misery! This is the end, and this is the life and excellency of all your mercies. For all present mercies have the nature of a means to a further end. And the goodness and nature of the means consisteth in its fitness to promote the end. And therefore you have lost all the mercies that you have received, if you are never the nearer your end for them, and if they have not promoted the love of God, and your salvation. You have had health, and strength, and time, and peace, and liberty, and some of you also wealth and honour in the world. But you have lost them all, if your salvation be not furthered by them. Many a preservation you have had, when others have been cut off before your faces; and many a deliverance from dangers known or unknown, and much of the fruit of that patience of God, which hath till now attended you in your sin. Many a sermon you have heard, and many a warning you have had, and you have been planted in God's vineyard, and daily watered with the ordinances of grace. But all these are lost, if the one thing necessary hath been neglected. Nothing in this world doth you good indeed, any further than it promoteth your everlasting good. And do you think that you have dealt kindly or justly with God, to deal so contemptuously with all his mercies, as to cast them away, and tread them under foot? When you want but food, or raiment, or liberty, or health, you value them and pray for them; and when you have them what do you do with them, but throw them as in the channel, and sacrifice them to your lusts and enemies? When death looketh you in the

face, you begin to know the worth of time, and then, O what would you not give for a little more, and that God would try you a few years longer. And when you have time, what do you with it, but serve the devil, and cast it away for nothing, and spend it in preparing for everlasting sorrows! How can you for shame cry, to God for mercy in your next distress, when you have contemptuously thrown away the mercies of twenty, or thirty, or forty years already. If your own children should ask you for meat or drink, and when they have it should throw it to the dogs; or ask you for money, and cast it into the dirt, and do thus a hundred and a hundred times over, would you go on to give it them because they cry for it?

O sirs, that you could but use your reason in the matters for which it was given you by your Maker! Either time and mercy is worth something, or nothing! If it be worth nothing, never beg for it, and never be sad when it is taken from you. Why make you such a stir for that which is nothing worth? (I mean your corporal mercies, for spiritual mercies you can be too well content to be without.) But if they be worth any thing, why do you cast them away, and make no better use of them? What good do you with them? or what good do they do you? Believe it, sinners, God doth not despise his mercies as you do. He will not always give you meat, and drink, and health, and strength, and life to play with, and do nothing with. He will teach you better to value them before he hath done with you. Not that he thinks them too good for you, but he would have them be better to you than you will let them be. He would have every bit you eat, to be used to strengthen you in your walk to heaven, and every hour of your time to help you towards eternal happiness, and every present mercy to further your everlasting mercy; that so by the improvement their value might be advanced, and they may be mercies indeed to you. Be ruled by God, and you shall receive more in one mercy, than you do now in a thousand. But if you will do nothing with them, blame him not if he take them from you, and leave you destitute of what you knew not how to use.

Nay, your sin is greater than merely to cast away your mercies. You do not only lose them, but turn them all into a curse, and undo your souls with that which is given for the sustentation of your bodies. While you know no bet